


half turn to go, yet turning stay

by outruntheavalanche



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amnesia, Darkest Night 2018, Gen, Horror Elements, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Memory Alteration, Mind Manipulation, POV Armitage Hux, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-17 06:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16090157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: He blamesRen.





	half turn to go, yet turning stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smaragdbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/gifts).



> We matched on a different pairing but the idea [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/profile)[**smaragdbird**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/) 's prompts inspired worked best with Hux and Ren. I ended up kinda mashing up a few of [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/profile)[**smaragdbird**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/)'s ideas. 
> 
> Thanks to [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blastellanos/profile)[**blastellanos**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blastellanos/) for the beta!
> 
> Title from "Remember," by Christina Rossetti.

_Better by far you should forget and smile_  
_Than that you should remember and be sad._  
— "Remember," Christina Rossetti

* * *

In the aftermath of the disappointment of Starkiller, the disappearance of Phasma, the death—no, the _assassination_ —of the Supreme Leader, Armitage finds that he’s begun misplacing some of the hours of his days. 

Chunks of time simply go missing, as if excised by a scalpel. He has no reason to believe these events are connected, and yet he does. 

He blames _Ren_.

 

 

Armitage wakes to the sensation of his mind being stitched back together by an unsteady, unseen hand, which begs the question: who had torn it apart in the night to begin with? And whose cosmic hand is now stitching the pieces of Armitage’s tender, aching mind back together? 

Who had torn him apart like hungry dogs set upon meat?

Of course, it can only be Ren.

Armitage tries to remember—

There was something he was meant to do today. 

He was going to—

But the memory is simply gone, again cut away by that inexpert hand. 

Armitage groans and rolls over on his cot, pressing his wounded head against the cool durasteel wall. 

This has been happening more and more often since Starkiller and the usurping of the throne. But can Armitage really even be sure, with the gaps that keep turning up in his memory? 

He had gone to speak with Ren earlier about the search for the remains of the Resistance. Yes, he remembers that meeting only for how fruitless and frustrating a visit it turned out to be. 

Ren had been of no use, of course, only sputtering indignantly about the _scavenger_ , that little scrap of nothing who’d humiliated him—and the whole of the First Order, doubtless—on Crait.

 

 

Armitage finds he misses Phasma dearly. She was never much of a travel companion—or any sort of companion at all—but at least she wasn’t Ren. 

They parried and sparred together sometimes, to keep the other on their toes. 

It wasn’t a _friendship_ by any stretch of the imagination, but it helped chase away the dull boredom that threatened Armitage round every corner.

Now—much like Armitage’s memories—even Phasma is gone. 

He wonders if Ren has cut Phasma out like a tumor, as well. 

He hadn’t seen what became of her, in the fiery chaos that engulfed the _Supremacy_ , but he can only assume Ren had chosen to get her out of the way.

Ren has an endgame in mind, and it’s one Armitage is on the outside of. He doesn’t _like_ being on the outside.

The door to Armitage’s suite opens with a click and a pneumatic hiss and he looks up from his datapad. 

A hulking shadow lurks in the doorway and Armitage moves his gloved hand to the blaster affixed to his belt.

He curls his finger in the trigger and he’s about to lift the weapon, perhaps fire off a warning shot, when the figure lifts its hand and everything blinks out in an instant—

 

 

When Armitage opens his eyes, he’s still lying in his bunk, his datapad resting by his hip. 

His blaster is still affixed to his belt. 

He reaches up and prods gently at a knot on his jaw, frowning. Pain blooms under his fingertips, radiating up and down the side of his face. 

It feels like only a few minutes have passed, at the most, and yet everything is off-kilter. Everything feels so _wrong_ , the chilly processed air vibrating with dark, crackling energy.

Someone’s struck him, that much is clear. And yet Armitage has no memory of it. 

Armitage tosses aside his datapad and swings his legs out from under the covers, only to find them bandaged up. 

He reaches down and tugs at the wrappings, his frown deepening. 

When he places one of his feet on the firm, duracrete floor, pain shoots up his shins and calves. 

With shaking, gloved fingers, he begins to unwind the compression bandages, wondering what he’ll find underneath.

Ren is a beast, a vicious monster that’s turned on the hand that once held its leash. And now all in its path are being brought to heel.

(He wonders where it will end. _If_ it will end.)

Armitage sheds the bandages and stares at his feet. There are shallow nicks and cuts on his soles, as if he’d stepped on broken glass.

Armitage rewraps the wounds and settles back on his cot, an odd sensation sweeping over him. 

He feels as if he’s being watched.

He jolts up in bed, lightning bolts of pain shooting through his legs.

What had Ren done to him?

The shadows that stetch across the walls of Armitage’s austere chamber gather in the center of the room, congealing like blood. 

He gropes for the blaster he keeps under his pillow, but his fingers close around nothing but air.

“You look frightened.” Ren slinks out of the shadows, his cape swirling behind him. “Why are you so frightened?”

Ren almost sounds amused.

His footsteps scrape across the duracrete, digging into Armitage’s tender, wounded brain like claws.

“Something very strange is happening,” Armitage says. 

Ren chuckles, dryly. “Oh, is that so?” 

He moves closer to Armitage’s cot and lifts his hand, curling his fingers into a tight, unforgiving fist.

Armitage’s hands fly up to his neck, pulling desperately at the invisible bond around his neck.

“R—Ren,” he chokes out. 

“Close your eyes,” Ren orders, clenching his hand into an even tighter fist. “And go to sleep.”

Armitage’s eyelids feel immediately heavy and his body goes heavy and leaden.

“ _No_ ,” Armitage gasps, struggling, fighting against the weight of sleep. 

“Yes,” Ren hisses.

Armitage feels rather than hears something cracking, and then everything goes dark.

 

Armitage blinks his eyes open and finds himself standing in front of his ship’s viewport, gazing out at a vast black canvas studded with trillions of tiny, diamond-like stars. 

He squints uncomprehendingly at his sallow-eyed reflection in the glass before he turns away from it. 

The bruises on his neck throb painfully, crawling up his neck and out of the collar of his uniform as if they’re living beings. 

He touches his fingers to them, lightly, wondering. 

How had they gotten there?

Who had inflicted them?

He reaches for a memory—any memory—but his mind rebels. 

“General?”

He turns to find a subordinate gazing up at him with worried eyes.

“What is it?” he snaps, shoving his hands into the pockets of his cloak and clenching them into fists.

The lieutenant’s forehead creases, but she doesn’t answer and only returns to her post. 

Armitage wonders what the lieutenant had seen in his eyes when she looked at him.

He feels something light brushing across his cheek like a faint breeze. Like breath, from someone standing behind him.

He turns.

A black-gloved hand lifts into the air, clenches into a fist, and everything blinks out. 

 

He surfaces to the sensation of hundreds of tiny hands clutching at him, tearing at his cloak and uniform, nails digging into his skin. 

Armitage opens his mouth to scream, but a burning pain splits him at the seams. 

No sound comes out. 

The hands rip his clothing to shreds and then—

And then they start tearing at his flesh. 

 

When he wakes this time, he’s back in his own bed, a thin sheet the only thing covering him. Armitage pulls it away and looks down at his body, searching for scars, cuts, wounds, but he finds none.

Armitage touches his chest, feeling for nicks and cuts. 

There’s nothing there but his own smooth, unblemished skin. 

He falls back against his pillows and winces in discomfort. When he sits up and peers down at the sheets, he gasps in shock. 

The bedsheets are soaked in his blood. 

Armitage touches the iron-red stain on the fabric and then prods at his shoulder blades. His fingers come away sticky with blood.

He tips his face up at the ceiling and lets out a pained howl. “What’s happening to me?”

The blank, duracrete ceiling offer him no answers.

“You seem troubled, Hux,” comes the voice.

Armitage cowers back against the wall. “Ren?” he calls out.

“Yes,” Ren says, slipping out of the shadows. He slips off his shiny leather gloves and flexes his unnaturally pale hands. 

Armitage doesn’t miss that his knuckles are mottled red, and cracked and bleeding. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice shaking far too much for his liking. 

He doesn’t want Ren to see him so weak and _broken_. 

Ren laughs openly, a flash of his teeth in the dark. He lets the gloves drop to the floor. “Come here.”

“No,” Armitage chokes out.

Ren’s lips twitch, curling up faintly at the corners, before he lifts his hand and twists his fingers and then Armitage finds himself being lifted off of his cot by cruel, invisible hands. 

He struggles against those unseen hands, desperate, clawing helplessly at air. 

“Why are you doing this?” he gasps.

Those invisible hands dump him at Ren’s booted feet unceremoniously. 

“Because it’s _fun_ ,” Ren says. “Because I enjoy it.”

He reaches down to play with the shiny buckle on his belt. The sight sends sheer terror coursing through Armitage’s body. 

Armitage tries to scramble to his feet, but he’s held in place. Pinned down under the weight of Ren’s power and might. He feels like a puppet on strings, a plaything for a wicked child. 

“Please,” he begs. 

Ren only laughs.

He moves closer and closer until the only thing Armitage can make out is the black of his heavy cloak.

 

When he comes to, next, he’s in the infirmary. 

Armitage tries to sit up but his arms and legs are strapped down to the bed. 

The words tear out of him before he can even begin to think. 

“Where are you, you coward?” 

He tugs against the leather restraints, but there’s no give, the straps only cutting off the circulation in his limbs. 

Perhaps that’s what Ren wants. Perhaps he wants—even _expects_ —Armitage to struggle against his bonds only to be smacked down by the hand of fate. 

It’s hardly a fair fight anyway, is it? 

He can feel the tendons in his neck cording and the muscles in his straining arms and legs taut with the effort. But the straps won’t budge. 

An unseen door opens with a wizened sigh and those footsteps… Armitage’s blood runs cold in his veins.

“Stay back,” he rasps out. 

The shadows stretch across the ceiling, reaching out for him. Beckoning him to come. 

“Let’s play a game.” The disembodied voice sounds so familiar and yet _not_. 

There’s the hiss-click of breath, a pause and then an exhale. And then a vibrant hum as the room suddenly illuminates in a wash of red. 

Armitage tries to scramble back against the wall, but the bonds hold him in place. Offering hm up as a sacrifice to whatever cruel, capricious god this is. 

“I—I don’t want to play any games,” he stammers, digging his fingers into the mattress underneath him. As if that will help stave off the terror that threatens to overwhelm him. 

“It was not a request,” that inhuman voice purrs.

Armitage squeezes his eyes shut but he can still see the red glow through his eyelids. He can feel the shimmering, crackling heat of a lightsaber blade pulsing against his skin and he knows—

“Lord Vader,” he whimpers.

“Now you’re catching on,” a detached, dispassionate voice intones. There’s a click as the lightsaber is sheathed away and the wheezing, artificial breath recedes like the tides. 

Armitage blinks his eyes open. 

Ren stares down at him, pale-faced except for the ugly, livid scar that streaks down the right side of his face like a bolt of red lightning. 

“You’re a quick learner,” Ren says, pulling his lips back in a feral smile.

There’s an almost mad glint in his eyes that sends another chill through Armitage’s blood. He’s worked with Ren for years but he’s never seen the man so… 

“I can read your thoughts,” Ren says, the smile fading, the grotesque rictus replaced by an impassive white mask. “And I do not like them.”

“I don’t—I’m sorry—” he blubbers, twisting against the leather bonds.

Ren stares down at him, his eyebrows knitting in an expression of displeasure. As if Armitage has let him down in some way.

Perhaps it’s because he’s fighting against him still! Maybe if Armitage plays along, Ren will be kind! 

Armitage is so clever. No one’s as clever as he is, as adept at thinking on their feet. If anyone can bring Ren to heel, surely it’s Armitage.

“M—Master Ren,” he says, offering Ren a faint twitch of a smile. He turns his palms up in supplication. “In your infinite mercy, perhaps you could loosen the bonds.”

Ren’s eyes grow dim, but only for a moment. “I don’t think I’ll do that,” he says, finally, his fingers twitching against his thigh. 

Armitage flicks his eyes down; his hands are gloveless and pale. 

One of those white hands lifts and the fingers curl and that is the last thing Armitage sees.

*** 

“How long has he been like this?”

“Quite some time, General.”

“Is there any hope of extracting information?”

“It seems doubtful, at best.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

He blinks his eyes open and stares up into unfamiliar eyes. 

And yet… He _knows_ those eyes. He’s seen them set in another face, he’s sure of it.

“Wh—where am I?” he gasps past a parched throat and swollen tongue.

“Here,” the owner of those eyes says, holding a glass against his cracked lips. “Drink.”

He struggles to sit up, but there are bonds tying him down.

“Why am I…” He tries to tug his wrists free, to no avail.

“You were shot down over the Jakku desert.” The voice is familiar too, and rough-hewn. The glass is pulled away and replaced with a cloth that dabs at his lips. “You were recovered by a rescue party. You’ve been with us for… oh, nearly a standard month now.”

The owner of the eyes and the voice comes into focus more and more. A rope of gray hair bound atop a bowed head. Thin lips lined with wrinkles. And those eyes, those dark, piercing, penetrating eyes. 

“Who are _you_?” he asks.

“I am General Leia Organa. But you already knew that, didn’t you, General Hux?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “This must be a game. One of _his_ games.”

“Who?” General Leia Organa—allegedly—puts a hand on his bare arm. 

“ _Him_ ,” he says, his eyes darting to the dark corners of the room. To the shadows. 

Where is he? Surely he’s waiting. Watching. Surely he’s plotting his next move.

“If you don’t calm down you’ll have to be sedated again,” General Leia Organa says, “and I’m sure you won’t want that.”

“Come out and play, you bastard,” he cries to the shadows. “What are you waiting for?”

The woman looks over his head to someone— _him_ —and then there’s a sharp pricking pain in his arm. 

Drowsiness settles over him like a death shroud but just before he goes under he swears the shadows smile at him and _laugh_.


End file.
